Joey Bats Goes Ballistic
For a player sometimes referred to as “Joey Bats,” Jose Bautista hadn’t exactly been an offensive stalwart prior to 2010. A 20th-round draft-and-follow-pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates back in 2000, Bautista wasn’t placed on the Bucs’ 40-man roster after the 2003 season. His omission began a Rule V odyssey taking him through Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Queens, and finally back to the ‘Burgh (as part of a deadline deal for Kris Benson) within the span of six months. The Pirates shipped Bautista to Toronto in August of ’08 for catcher Robinzon Diaz, currently struggling to slug .330 for Detroit’s Triple-A affiliate. From 2004-2009, Bautista’s bat was six percent below average (94 wRC+), and his .161 Isolated Power was right around the big league norm. He racked up a combined 1.8 wins above replacement. To most fans, Joey Bats was just another Joe Shmoe trying to stick on a major league roster.
And then, 2010 happened. In 452 plate appearances, Bautista is batting .263/.376/.600. His .162 wRC+ dwarfs his modest CHONE and ZiPS pre-season projections (both called for a 94 wRC+). With 33 home runs, Bautista holds a five dinger lead over his closest competitor, Adam Dunn. Jose’s .337 ISO tops all big leaguers (Miguel Cabrera is a distant second, at .300) and more than doubles his pre-season forecasts (.162 from ZiPS, .163 from CHONE). Despite his continued defensive issues, Bautista ranks 16th among position players with four WAR. He hasn’t simply surpassed expectations. Rather, he has taken those expectations, crumpled them into a little ball, and then hammered them all the way to Quebec.
How has Bautista done it? Well, he’s hitting the ball on the ground much less often. Bautista’s ground ball rate, 41.9 percent from 2004-2009, is just 32.2% in 2010. His fly ball percentage, 42.8 percent from ’04 to ’09, is 52.2% (third-highest in the majors). His home run per fly ball rate has spiked from 10.4% from ’04 to ’09 to 21% this season (fifth in the majors).
Bautista is also pulling the ball a lot more this season:
The chart above is normally positive for most players, as the average batter shows far more power to the pull side than to the center and opposite fields. But it’s even better for Bautista. He’s an abysmal hitter when he puts the ball in play to right field:
The past couple of years, he has been Tony Pena Jr. circa 2008 when he goes the opposite way. He has never hit an opposite-field homer in his career. To center, Bautista performs quite well compared to the average hitter:
But that’s nothing compared to his exploits when pulling the ball. Bautista has long been above average when hitting to left, but check out those 2010 numbers.
Bam! Pow! Zap! A .650 wOBA. A .699 ISO, with nearly 47% of his fly balls finding the cheap seats. Twenty-nine of Bautista’s 33 home runs have been hit to the pull side. Take a look at his home run chart from Hit Tracker Online:
There’s an inverse relationship between power and fastballs seen — the more pop a player displays, the less often he gets a heater. We’ve seen that with Bautista this season, as he has gotten a fastball just 49.4%, which is the fifth-lowest FB% among MLB hitters and is well below his career 57.7% rate of fastballs seen. It hasn’t much mattered to this point, as Bautista is killing everything but changeups.
Bautista’s gargantuan season has been a happy development for the Blue Jays, and it would be a mistake to simply waive off his power display as a total fluke. That being said, there’s no way he’s going to keep an ISO approaching Babe Ruth’s career mark. ZiPS projects a .359 wOBA for Jose, with a .245 ISO that essentially splits the difference between his career figure entering 2010 and his current, jaw-dropping total.
It will be interesting to see what course of action the Jays take with Bautista this off-season. He’s arbitration-eligible in 2011 and then hits free agency. Bautista’s making $2.4 million this year, and early estimates of his arbitration award this winter are in the $6-$8 million range. Even with significant regression, Bautista is worth that sum. But would Toronto be best off shopping him this off-season, while his value is at its apex? I have a hard time believing GM Alex Anthopoulos won’t heavily consider that option. What do you think?
A recent graduate of Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for Fangraphs, The Pittsburgh Sports Report and Baseball Analytics. His work for Inside Edge Scouting Services has appeared on ESPN.com and Yahoo.com, and he was a fantasy baseball columnist for Rotoworld from 2009-2010. He recently contributed an article on Mike Stanton's slugging to The Hardball Times Annual 2012. Contact David at david.golebiewski@gmail.com and check out his work at Journalist For Hire.
Problem is, no team is going to want to risk trading their top prospects for Jose (we call him the Jedi) considering his lack of a track record. Theres no point trading the guy for mediocre prospects.
I thought we called him EPIC BEARD MAN? *shrugs*
No one calls him Joey Bats.
His nickname is Jose “The Bomber” Bautista
The article was great though, beside that minor problem.
Everyone Calls him Joey Bats!! and when he makes a nice catch we call him Joey Glove
nick names are key to a player being noticed in a smaller market like toronto. dont hate on bats
the bomber? not as catchy, sorry
That’s an exceptionally terrible nickname for any player.
Seriously.
No one ever mention that nickname again.
Jo Bau hits Jome runs.
Here in Toronto, we have a mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone whose nickname is Joey Pants. His #1 campaign promise is to bring world class cricket to Toronto, and his promotional literature has pictures of him from behind with a cricket bat over his shoulder. Sigh.
Bautista’s power explosion began in September, 2009. Mechanical changes to speed up his swing are widely credited for the improvement. Prior to September, 2009, he had trouble getting around on the heat.
Perhaps the 2nd paragraph should have started:
“And then, Sept 2009 happened.”
I think that’s when he really started to turn things on… .606 SLG.
No Coke, Ryan? I’m kinda thirsty.
Pretty sure it’s JoBau. Never heard Joey Bats before this article.
Joey Bats was more of a Pittsburgh thing.
It’s embarrassing that they can’t even do nicknames right.
Wasn’t it more of a Greg Brown thing than a Pittsburgh thing?
The man is just awful at creating nicknames. And he tries so hard.
It’s Joey Bats. Thanks for coming out.
Too bad his name isn’t even close to sounding like Joe.
Maybe it’s pronounced “Hoey Bats”!
Sure, but Jose is Spanish for Joseph, no?
I wonder if Michael Young would mind if his nickname was Michel (pronounced me-shell).
See what he would say.
This has been a hotly contested issue in Jays land (hey, it’s been a slow couple months with no pennant race) and a lot of people have given their opinions.
Personally, I say keep him. I wrote a piece at the old blog with my rationale, basically my premise was a team’s improvement isn’t linear (duh) and who knows when the Jays will “arrive”, but he could be like their Carlos Pena. Who was instrumental in the Rays first big season in ’08…
I’ve seen an argument that says they may keep him in order to facilitate Alex Anthopolous’ desire to expand their appeal within the Latin America. (I recall reading somewhere that JoBau is serving as Yunel’s translator, so he’s doing some work to help bridge gaps right there.) And they’ll need him, if this is the case, especially because it seems like they’ll be parting with E5.
Why the heck does he get anyting middle or in?
I would give him nothing but hard stuff on the outside, and anything inside would be between the corner and his belt buckle.
I would LOVE to see pitch location of his HRs. My guess would be that there is a very similar grouping on the pitches he hits out of the park … y’know one of those guys that swings in “one area” and sometimes the ball hits the bat and goes a long way. That’s exaggerating of course, but I would bet that the vast majority of bombs are in a rather specific location, likely inner half, belt high.
Anywhere I could find that info?
Bautista has done a great job taking pitches on the outside part of the plate, especially breaking pitches.
He predominantly tries to look for the fastball, and even if the fastball is on the outside of the corner, he’ll still pull it to left center.
I think pitching inside to Bautista may be the better choice to prevent some serious extension, but there have been a few times where he just pulls his hands inside and hooks the ball.
If it’s a good pitch, he’ll hit it out. If not, he’ll gladly take the walk.
That’s very interesting.
Amazing that he can, and is, pulling outside corner pitches with authority (that’s likely a rare combo of bat speed and strength). That SCREAMS to me “bust him inside”, and as always, by inside I mean corner to belt buckle, not just inner half.
If pitchers were feeding him some hard breaking stuff inside (breaking over the plate), he MAY have to be a little more hesitant on slamming the outside corner pitches … or … he may just be conceding that pitch, as the trade off for him being able to get extended (as they as) is worth it.
One thing I noticed at the high levels of HS baseball is that the very good teams do not even bother with swinging at breaking pitches. They look dead red all the time, figuring you have to come over the plate at least once. With two strikes they still look red, and foul off anything that isn’t. It’s pretty damn effective. Our big #2 (6’1 210, 86mph) lefty threw a 2-hit shutout in regionals, and got absolutely hammered by a team that employed this philosophy. He’s always been a fastball-curveball guy, so he was tailor made for them. He was coming back from arm surgery, so his pre-season throwing was limited (no time to master the change), and it cost him (and us) big time. Our #1, also a 6’1 lefty throwing 86-89, has a great change and cutter, and was 13-0, regional player of the year, scholarship to a major JuCo, etc.
Sorry for rambling, it just impresses me to see trends, and to see a major league baseball hitter with the discipline to look for a pitch and refuse to chase anything that’s “not it”, unless he has to.
Joey Bats? No, he’s The Franchise.
Actually the bluejays players themselves already nicknames Travis Snider “The Franchise”, but, he also sports the fan nickname “Moonraker” both good names but they both belong to Snider
I don’t think he’s going to be netting the Jays a top prospect any time soon — Omar Minaya doesn’t have any left!!!
I will come out of retirement if I can break 15 bats over the guy who created the nick-name Joey Bats. Then you can trade him for me and I hit 12 home rons.
defensive issues? like leading the league in assists (bad stat I know) despite playing a few hundred innings at 3B?
ya hes got a crazy arm, but everything else defensively about him isnt that great
This kind of has a Johnny Damon circa 2009 look to it. Player’s comfortable with his pull-side porch…might want to keep him around.
Except there’s no porch in the Rogers Centre.
Comparing him to Johnny Damon is pretty embarassing.
Johnny Damon was a pull hitting lefty in Yankee Stadium.
The website that rates the distance of home runs (can’t remember the name of it) named 17 of his home runs as “barely over”.
Bautista has 2 home runs at 350′ or less.
Down the right field line in Yankee stadium is less than 320′.
I think calling Jose Bautista a Johnny Damon comparable is pretty wild and unsupportable
David –
I’m glad you pulled up pitch value data. The one to focus on, in my opinion, is the slider … he is normally a run in the negative, but this year is two runs positive!
I’ve been looking at pitch values insofar as they can explain pitching luck and having a plus-fastball and plus-slider are one of only two combos that seem to really effect HR/FB (the other is FB/CH), so I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the secret to Bautista, ’10 vintage, is his newfound ability to crush the slider.
Thoughts?
The only insight I have on a newfound ability to hit sliders is that the Toronto hitting philosophy the last 2 years can be summarized thusly:
– go up to the plate with a plan to look for one pitch and one pitch only until 2 strikes – this has been Cito’s philosophy for years
– when you see said pitch – grip it and rip it
There is no question that there have been ABs where Bautista has been looking slider or curve and has then done some damage. As someone else noted above, he also has done a great job in laying off marginal sliders off the plate (he has always had some decent to good plate discipline skills – I think regular playing time have improved those).
I think there are a few things going on here – some luck; a noticeable change in approach to get his swing going earlier which has let him catch up to good fastballs; a league that, at least in part, still doesn’t realize that he can hit good fastballs now; an organizational hitting philosophy that works with his skills (i.e. k;s are ok); and regular playing time.
whatever
I love to see this. I think the turnaround of Bautista puts the lie to the idea that looking to hit to the opposite field and spraying the ball around are the best approach. Ted Williams didn’t spray the ball around and he hit for power AND average. He’s just one example. This reminded me of Dustin Pedroia. Bautista is not a very big guy. He’s pretty strong but not incredibly so. But he hits home runs because he swings hard. I remember watching a Red Sox game on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball where Jon Miller was talking about how lots of people had told Pedroia that he was swinging too hard and he needed to cut down on his swing. His reply was along the lines of ‘I’m small, I need to swing hard to get enough power’. The point I think is that if you just accept the fact that swinging hard is a good thing, you can tailor your timing mechanisms to account for it. All the plyometric loading that goes into swinging hard can be done long before you actually decide to pull the trigger on a swing. You load up on every pitch whether you’re going to swing or not. No matter how much you load up, you can get it done before the ball is too far past you. Cutting down on one’s swing is just compensation for poor timing or waiting too long to load up. Its unnecessary and it will always cost a hitter power. Pedroia and Bautista have no magic ability, they’ve just mastered the art of loading up for the swing at the right time, before its too late.
Given that Bautista stinks when not pulling the ball, shouldn’t pitchers be feeding him a steady diet of pitches that cannot be pulled?
Vernon Wells tries to pull everything as well, and ends up pounding the ball into the ground or hitting weak popups.
What is Joe Bats doing differently?
uh he clearly has better plate discipline, just take a look at their OBPs..
Having a career year. I doubt next year he keeps this up, though he’ll probably have the second best numbers of his career since he’ll be a regular from day 1. Kind of like Brady Anderson, 1996.
JoBau can get away with sitting on just one pitch because he does have very good plate discipline. Hes batting .263 with a .376 OBP.
Funny thing though, almost all of the Blue Jays are exceeding HR expectations/projections by a wide margin. Escobar gets traded to the Blue Jays and all of sudden his power outage is over.
Maybe they are stealing signs somehow
Watching him play and seeing his K-rates, I’m completely sold on him being at least a .260, probably closer to a .280 hitter. I’m not really expecting 50 HR each year, but there’s no reason he can’t continue to hit 30-35 the next few years.
a really nice post i really enjoyed it as it contain very interesting stuff.
I am not rattling excellent with English but I come up this really easy to understand .
UM anyone ever seen YOUTUBE before?
there is a JOEY BATS VIDEO of him when he was in toronto
its funny even tho he is a bad actor, how can anyone say they have never heard this nick name before??
its a joke name as if he was an itialin mobster